


The Sound of Stopping.

by MarbleAide



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Electrocution, Gen, Kidnapping, Torture, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:59:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarbleAide/pseuds/MarbleAide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a pipe that leaks behind him. He used to be able to turn his head and see it, slowly falling downward in a plip-plip every three seconds. He counted. Now, his head feels too heavy to do anything more than hang between his shoulders. The plip-plip isn’t a comforting sound anymore, one that signaled consciousness, something that he could focus on. It sounds like insanity now. Now, he can never tell if he is awake or not, as dripping water flows through his ears constantly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Stopping.

**Author's Note:**

> My first (finally!) finished Skyfall fic. 
> 
> Dedicated to my girlfriend who's pretty awesome and helped inspire me to write this. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

There’s a pipe that leaks behind him. He used to be able to turn his head and see it, slowly falling downward in a plip-plip every three seconds. He counted. Now, his head feels too heavy to do anything more than hang between his shoulders. The plip-plip isn’t a comforting sound anymore, one that signaled consciousness, something that he could focus on. It sounds like insanity now. Now, he can never tell if he is awake or not, as dripping water flows through his ears constantly. It makes him flinch, hearing it, even though it’s utterly ridiculous. It’s always the same, steady, constant. But sometimes, he swears, it sounds just a little bit too loud or falls just a little bit too fast and he thinks it might be something else. Someone. He flinches.

His breathing always comes in pants now. The harsh burn of oxygen as it rushes down his throat, expanding his lungs too tight against broken ribs. There’s been a point where, he thinks, if he breathes hard enough and shifts just the right way, he’d puncture a lung. He thinks about blood rushing into bronchi, filling up the tubes until he can’t breathe anymore. Chokes. He’d cough up blood, stain his teeth, taste the copper heavy and simply breathe it in, over and over again until there’s too much red and too little air. Cough. Choke. He figures it is the closest way to dying on his own terms now. It seems practical.

But, he doesn’t; hasn’t. He just sits in the dark with a dripping pipe and waits. Waits for something. Someone.

He doesn’t ask for anything.

 ---

People would think that, when being tortured, the torturer would get more creative as they went. But they don’t. In his time, he’s found, that the first round his always light. It’s a way out. The open door that just stares back at you, showing off the light, and the uttering of a few simple words can get you to walk through it. So simple. But. It’s too easy. Simple. And he just laughs his reply, an unspoken ‘no’, and keeps laughing as that door closes.

The second round his when they scare you. Or, attempt to. They bring out big fists, whips, knives, things that are meant to peel and break and bend. Things that make him cry out and scream, but the noises only ever end in short barks of laughter. It’s not funny, it’s mocking. They hate it. This isn’t his first run around the track and they know that.

By the time it’s over, he’s covered in dark black and blue marks that slowly fade out to purple and red. Blood drips down his forehead, into his eye, making half the world blurry and tinted red. Four fingers are broken. Five toes. He keeps running his tongue over a gap in his mouth, pressing on tender gums and broken nerves to feel the dull throb and ache where a molar once was. He hears a loud ringing in his left ear that won’t go away. Makes the world spin. Flip. Everything feels so familiar. And he keeps smiling.

They’re tired before he is and, with a warning loaded to the brim, leave him.

The door closes behind them. Bond watches it through his one good eye and knows, as it slams shut taking all the light with it, he has to be the one who opens it up again.

 ---

Days, he thinks, but can’t remember how many had followed the first. The constant darkness obscures him. The random shocks of light when that door scratches against dirt and rust to open are artificial and make his eyes burn, hurt. He looks into it anyway, just to remember the color of warmth. He doesn’t want to forget. He fears that he might.

 ---

It’s not until they’re bored that they start thinking. When everything they’ve tried can’t get him to sing. He expects it, as usual, but by now he’s normally not around long enough to experience it.

They bring in a car battery, jumpers attached, and hook it up to his chest. He’s been naked for a while now. It’s supposed to be humiliating, but there’s nothing for him to be ashamed of. Though, there’s more dried blood then skin that he can see. Fingers and knives opened him up and painted it all over him. It’s not the first time he’s been electrocuted. There’s a second part to that thought that races through his head right before the first shock, but he refuses to let it pass. He doesn’t want to know what will happen if it’s a lie.

The first jolt makes him scream as they decide to not start off slow. There’s been no cooperation since they’d first got him tied to this chair and he thinks that maybe they’ve finally gotten smart and figured out that he’ll never talk.

His entire body tenses. His muscles convulse and by the time the pain stops he smells the scent of burnt hair; skin. His fingers twitch, crooked and bent in the wrong direction. He can’t get enough air into his body and his heart skips in a way that is surely dangerous. He can’t think long enough to count out the beats before the second jolt shocks through his body and everything is white, blinding, burning, pain.

By the time they’re done, he’s not dead. There’s blood in his mouth from biting too hard. Burns pattern his chest and his muscles keep spasming. Jerking. He can’t stop them.

They say something to him and all it sounds like in his ears is muffled noises. Everything rings.

He passes out, but each darkness is the same. The pain follows him under.

 ---

No one has come to him in a while, which he takes as some sort of blessing, but his stomach churns and his tongue is too thick with blood to even remember how water tastes. The pipe behind him drips and taunts. His wrists as broken, bleeding, bruised, from trying to get free. He doesn’t quite remember when his last attempt was, but there is no more energy left. The door stays closed. Bond thinks this is not at all how he’d like to go out.

There wasn’t even a bang.

 ---

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. There’s only pain and the constant plip-plip of the leaking pipe. There’s no light around him, nothing but drips and black. He doesn’t know if he’s awake or not and, sometimes, he forgets himself. Numbers get harder to say and he’s lost. Utterly.

It’s easy just to slip away.

 ---

“Dying.”

He says the word just to see if he can. His voice is so far off, broken, choked, and he coughs and coughs and coughs; air that is too precious to lose, oxygen mixed with blood and fluid. It hurts too much afterwards and decides it’s something he shouldn’t do again.

Thinking about it, he decides differently. He doesn’t want to lie anymore. He’s done. So,

‘ _No,_ ’ he finally thinks and closes his eyes (he can feel it, his eyelashes, brushing against skin and he thinks that’s so beautiful, that it feels like grace, deciding then and there he never wants to make them open again), ‘ _Dead._ ’

 ---

He doesn’t see them, too exhausted to even open his eyes, besides its most likely a dream. Hallucination. It all depends, he supposes, but he enjoys the dreams more. They’re always a bit nicer. Feel more real.

Even without sight, he can hear them. Hear frantic voices. Panic, he believes, with something like relief. Maybe. There’s a soft white light behind his eyelids, breaking through the darkness, and thinks that he might have been wrong about God all along.

Things touch him. Fingers, hands, he believes, because he can feel calluses and there comes a gasp from his lips. They feel so warm. So alive, even if they press too hard into skin that still hasn’t healed with bones underneath that have shattered. He feels alive so suddenly that it scares him, it hurts, and there is a moment where he wants to struggle. If he had the energy he would, because he was so ready to just die. Let go. It’s what he wants, really, but his voice is lost in telling this person—people—and it makes Bond want to sob.

He hears names from the people, words that he almost remember mean something, but it’s all lost as they untie him and take him from the chair. He can’t walk and they know that, can’t do anything, so they carry him. Get him out, they say, the ambulance is outside. Waiting. Hospital.

There’s an extra voice, one that doesn’t match with the others, almost screaming into the air, but still sounding so quiet. Bond thinks of feathers, wings, and beautiful white.

“Is he alive? Damnit—report! Is 007 breathing!?”

He can imagine a face to go along with that voice. It would belong to someone with dark hair that always needed to be brushed. Eyes that only ever looked amused when they thought Bond wasn’t looking. Thin lips, pale skin, a slender throat and long fingers that always typed too fast. Annoying. The distinct scent of morning tea with just a touch of sugar. He’s seen it when he closes his eyes, he thinks, but it cannot be placed. A letter that he can never remember.

Bond can hear breathing after that, heavy and thick, slowly connecting it as his own and thinks he must be alive.

And thinks he would quite like that. To live again. And see that face and hear that voice.

‘ _Yes,_ ’ The thought comes. Bond smiles as best he can, cracking skin and blood and dried spit on his lips. ‘ _If only one more time._ ’

Breathes in again, feeling the burn and hurt and pain, and all the wonderful things that come with being alive.

It feels right.


End file.
